Most overated author?

[Ryduce]

Which do you dislike the most?

[IrishCanadian]

I have no idea which i dislike the most .... maybe Kafka .... but the most "overated" might be ... wel ... Kafka i think.

[Virgil]

People are going to hate me for this. I'm going to list a few authors who I think are over rated. Now that doesn't mean they don't have value, just that their reputation exceeds my estimate of their merit. And let me emphasize, my estimate.

Mark Twain
Ernest Hemingway
ee cumings
Norman Mailer
Allen Ginsberg
Kate Chopin
Ayn Rand
Joseph Heller
Arthur Miller

I stayed from contemporary writers, since it takes time for reputations to settle in. And by coincidence I see I picked only American writers, which probably means I don't feel comfortable with knowing the reputations of foreign writers.

[Ryduce]

Personally I never liked James Joyce.Though alot of people have told me he's the greatest writer ever.I've read all his stuff.

[IrishCanadian]

While i disagre with Ryduce, i agree whole heartedly with Virgil!

[Ryduce]

I dont agree with Twain or Hemingway.

[Virgil]

Personally I never liked James Joyce.Though alot of people have told me he's the greatest writer ever.I've read all his stuff.
Joyce is a great writer, but I've always been put off by the people who say he's the greatest. He almost made my list. Remember, the question was over rated. I think Twain and Hemingway are good writers, just way overblown

[Charles Darnay]

I also agree with Virgil on some points.... I enjoy Twain and Hemmingway but i think they're over rated.

I don't think ee cummings is over rated.... quite the opposite i think

I definatly wouldn't put Kafka on my list, but i haven't been exposed to any Kafka so i suppose i dont know if he's over rated

My list:
Margaret Atwood
J.K Rowling
Dan Brown
Daniell Steel

Modern writers. I think people give these writers far too much credit. As one who is against the Hollywoodization of the novel, I think people confuse "good writing" with "an enjoyable read" - these authors manage to spin an enjoyable read, but in terms of their abliity to write - they are given far too much praise

[The Unnamable]

Joyce is a great writer, but I've always been put off by the people who say he's the greatest. He almost made my list.

I'm sure he'd feel honoured. :D

This whole thread reminds me of that scene in Manhattan where Woody, accompanied by his 17 year old girlfriend (Tracy), encounters Mary (Diane Keaton) and Yale. Perhaps it's a bit like that Saturday Night Live skit you mentioned:

"MARY: What do you do, Tracy?
TRACY: I go to high school.

MARY: Oh, really. Really. Somewhere Nabokov
is smiling, if you know what I mean.

YALE: LeWitt is overrated. In fact,
he may be a candidate for the academy.

MARY: Right!

YALE: Mary and I have invented the Academy
of the Overrated for such notables as

MARY: Gustav Mahler,
YALE: Isak Dinesen and Carl Jung.

MARY: Scott Fitzgerald.
YALE: Lenny Bruce. Can't forget him, can we?

MARY: How about Norman Mailer?
WOODY: I think those people are all terrific.

YALE: Who was that guy you had?
MARY: I didn't. It was yours. Heinrich Bol.

WOODY: Overrated?
MARY: Don't wanna leave out Heinrich.

WOODY: Gee, what about Mozart?
You guys don't wanna leave out Mozart while you’re trashing people."

[EAP]

Joyce
Dostoevsky
Tolstoy
Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi
Col. Mohammad Khan
Mumtaz Mufti
Mirza Ghalib
V. S. Naipal
Kobo Abe
Charlotte Bronte
Frank Herbert
Robert Anson Heinlein

[Xamonas Chegwe]

When compiling these lists, can I ask exactly what you mean by over-reated?

Do you mean that they are respected as great writers by the literary 'establishment' but that you personally don't like them?
Or that they sell lots of books but you think they shouldn't?
Or perhaps that you had high expectations of them and were disappointed?

I ask because there is a great disparity between the lists of authors. Virgil's contains only 'literary' authors - Charles's is much more populist - EAP's is a mix of the two.

I think we need to establish a consistent definition of 'over-rated' rather than just spitting out endless lists of writers we don't like much.

But what do I know - I have read and love everything written by Kafka - and Joyce's Dubliners is one of the best collections of short-stories I have ever read.

[Ryduce]

You can interpret it as you please.I don't hate Joyce,I actually enjoyed The Portrait of The Artist As A Young Man,but all the people I've known who have read him universally agree that he's the best and that Ulysses is the greatest book ever.I just happen to think this is a bold statement.There is too much great literature in the world for someone to be called the greatest.

[Charles Darnay]

It was established at the beginning that over-rated does not mean you do not dislike the authors. It simply means that, at least what i think, they are given too much credit and you just constatnly hear about Hemmingway or Joyce (two authors i quite enjoy btw) everywhere. If you were to walk into a small-time bookstore in America for example and take a look at their classics section, they would have tons of Hemmingways novels (despite the fact that he may or may not be considered classsics to some people) and maybe one Herman Melville or Hawthorne.

That's just my opinion on this subject

[Ryduce]

We could do another thread about writers who don't get enough credit.That might be more interesting to talk about.

[PeterL]

We could do another thread about writers who don't get enough credit.That might be more interesting to talk about.

Agreed, there are many ignored authors, who are truly great, or who have written at least one great book.

[emily655321]

Thanks for bringing up Melville. :p I think he's trash. No one paid attention to him until he was adopted as a hero among the Jazz Age literati, and since then no one has questioned that he's a "classic," but I think he ought to have been forgotten at the bottom of the dump heap.

Kafka I like well enough, but his writing strikes me of amateurish at times. I would catagorize Kafka as a "pleasant read" for the more morose of us.

I would also add to the list the name of Thomas Hardy. Don't know that he's held in especially high esteem, but I wouldn't recommend him to anybody, even for light bedtime reading. Absolutely dripping with the melodramatic contructs of his day.

[Virgil]

Although I've never actually read too far by him, how about Marcel Proust. I can't speak from experience, but from what I've read elsewhere about him he seems he would be acheingly tedious.

[bluevictim]

I think Steinbeck is over-rated. I enjoy his novels (my favorite so far is Cannery Row), but they're just not as super-great as people make them out to be. By the time I graduated high school, among the various required English classes I took, I had gone through, in considerable depth, both The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men twice. Not even the works of Shakespeare enjoyed this much attention. Maybe the social commentary in those books made them attractive to teachers (especially in California, perhaps) due to the abundance of possible essay and discussion topics, and thus everyone gets the impression that Steinbeck is a great writer from a young age.

At any rate, at least Steinbeck is a step up from Margaret Mitchell.

[Pendragon]

Stephen King. I've read one thing by him that was good in my opinion, a short story starring Sherlock Holmes but realing featuring Doctor Watson as the real solver of the puzzle, and having Holmes and Lestrade conspire to cover up the crime in the interests of the family. The rest is ravings. He is like the old pulp writers, you love him or hate him.

Perhaps this is heresy since he is my favorite classic author, but Twain is slighly overrated. He came to live on his reputation, not his writing towards the end of his life, and a lot of it lacks the wit and spark that made Twain who he was.

Melvile should be read aloud in the garden to bore the inscects off the vegetables. It would be better than pesticide. http://www.smileyville.net/aiwan/pleasantry.gif

[PeterL]

I think Steinbeck is over-rated. I enjoy his novels (my favorite so far is Cannery Row), but they're just not as super-great as people make them out to be. By the time I graduated high school, among the various required English classes I took, I had gone through, in considerable depth, both The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men twice. Not even the works of Shakespeare enjoyed this much attention.

I agree. Steinbeck is pretty good, but not even near superstar status.

[Ryduce]

Steinbeck is the greatest!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :banana: :banana: :banana: :thumbs_up :thumbs_up Nobody disagree or I'll fight em.I'm kidding, but seriously he's the man.

[Wirhe]

Perhaps David Eddings, who is pretty famous despite the obvious flaws in his books (which are, in the end, just about black'n'white superhero-beating-evil).

[Unspar]

I've never posted here before, but as overrated authors is one of my favorite subjects, I have to join in.

Ultimately, I think you can make a case for any author being overrated. A work has to stand alone, and often more credit is given to the person than the work, and it's sometimes unbalanced.

With that in mind, I think Joyce is one of the least overrated writers because his writing is staggeringly good. His books (especially Ulysses) have very little going for them in terms of story, but the writing is mind-blowing. Criticize him all you want for readability--I do--but it's excellently crafted.

More or less the same goes for Pynchon, who I'm surprised no one mentioned yet. I give him less credit than Joyce because he's not as much of an innovator, but there's so much craftsmanship in his works that I have to respect his writing even if I don't understand it. Maybe it's misguided to respect what you can't understand, but I enjoy being a naive reader on occasion.

People I think are overrated: Charlotte Bronte, Robert Browning (poets and critics alike give him too much credit for the dramatic monologue), and T.S. Eliot (who I love, but The Waste Land actually isn't that great).

[Xamonas Chegwe]

No book has ever made me cry more than the end of "Grapes of Wrath".

[Ryduce]

Grapes of Wrath deeply effected me.It made me believe in human goodness.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

Grapes of Wrath deeply effected me.It made me believe in inhuman badness.

As well. ;)

[emily655321]

Grapes of Wrath deeply affected me. It cured my insomnia. ;)

[Ryduce]

To each his own my friend.

[crveniormaric]

My list: Dan Brown, Harold Robins, Danielle Steel, H. c. Mahler, Wilbur Smith, Helen Fielding,

[Ryduce]

It appears that everyone hates Dan Brown.Why so?I never read any of his books,but I've been meaning to get the Da Vinci Code.It seems pretty popular to normal folks, but serious literature fans hate it.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

There's a thread on it in the authors section - you'll get all the opinions there.

[gsingle33]

My list:
Margaret Atwood
J.K Rowling
Dan Brown
Daniell Steel

Modern writers. I think people give these writers far too much credit. As one who is against the Hollywoodization of the novel, I think people confuse "good writing" with "an enjoyable read" - these authors manage to spin an enjoyable read, but in terms of their abliity to write - they are given far too much praise

OMG YESS!!!!!!! Modern audiences seem to be more interested in books that do the thinking for them. Even though I loath to say it, Rowling may be a small exception b/c she actually incorporates some archetypal ideas into her works. :idea:

[crveniormaric]

Dan Brown has found a very interesting theme but I don't like his way of writing. I have a feeling of reeding screenplay for the movie not a book. Of course it's only my opinion. It's an easy reading - short sentences, short chapters. But maybe I think so beacuse I read before Hiram's key, Hiram' book, Rex Deus etc. and then Da Vinci's Code. I'm pretty sure that it would be a great movie. ;)

[Astrid]

J. K. Rowling, definately. And Dan Brown. Both of them have intriguing stories and ideas but their storytelling abilities themselves get old and boring fast... doesn't seem to drag me in enough. I love the concept of "The Da Vinci Code" though.

[IrishCanadian]

Ayn Rand
She is loved for her p[hilosophy ... but modern philosohpy students and proffessors do not consider her a philosopher. She also repeats ideas in the re-accurring themes in her very long books: The Fountainhead went on for about 700 pages of the same old thing to drive home a point that she made in the first 50 pages.

[higley]

Chuck Palahnuik. He's the "in" thing around here, especially among some of the college kids that would never willingly pick up Crime and Punishment or any sort of actual classic on their own time--he's fallback literature. I've read some of his stuff and it's stale. He starts out with plots that really are pretty good in concept, but his writing style just zaps all the interest out of it.

And totally agree with IrishCanadian about Ayn Rand.

[prasanthja]

What about Arundhati Roy? I think she is the most overrated.

[EAP]

If anything, Arundhati Roy is underrated.

[mtpspur]

Sir Walter Scott and Thomas Hardy---their books are just dense and monlithic in tone. You have to read a page twice to get it.

[Geoffrey]

Chuck Palahnuik. He's the "in" thing around here, especially among some of the college kids that would never willingly pick up Crime and Punishment or any sort of actual classic on their own time--he's fallback literature. I've read some of his stuff and it's stale. He starts out with plots that really are pretty good in concept, but his writing style just zaps all the interest out of it.


I agree with that. He simply neatly packages existentialism into witty pop culture and viola! A book thats not at all innovative or original.

I struggle to say any authors though are overrated - as a community I believe writers are some of the most under-appreciated individuals out there.

That being said, I still feel Jack Kerouac is a bit overrated, though I do greatly enjoy most of his writings it is really just not of the greatest form IMO. I feel similar about John O'Hara. Also JRR Tolkien has never done anything for me.

But cast this thread into the fire! We should all be ashamed! ;)

[Idril]

Also JRR Tolkien has never done anything for me.

Awww, I love Tolkien, but I can certainly see how his appeal may be limited. I didn't care for The Hobbit but Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion are always on my 'favorite book' lists.

I agree with Pendragon about Stephen King. He had a moment in time when I think he was writing some great stuff, The Stand has always been a standout for me but he gets a bit repetitious after awhile, which is bound to happen when you write 500 books.

And it pains me to say it, but I have never cared for Hemmingway or Joyce. I've tried to read both of them a few times and I always feel like I must be missing something, like there must be something wrong with me because everyone else considers them to be such geniuses, but I just don't get it, no matter how hard I try, I just can't see it. :confused:

[Bastet]

Ok, I was reading all the posts so far and I have to say that I definitely agree with whoever said James Joyce and Herman Melville.

On the Dan Brown topic, I don't hate him, I actually enjoyed The Da Vinci Code when I read it. However, Digital Fortress is a bunch of lies. How do I know? Well, it's set in a city in Spain, which happens to be MY city, and Mr. Brown has made up so many things about it that I almost didn't recognize my own city. By the way, he claims to have lived here for a year, but I honestly can't tell from the book. In the end, everybody here was so outraged about it, that his editor had to publicly apologize for it. So much for his credibility as a researcher. Obviously, that completely spoiled my opinion on The Da Vinci Code.

[Bastet]

And needless to say, I think so far he's probably the most over-rated author in present day literature

[Boris239]

Brown's novels are just entertaining and pretty interesting to read. Of course, it's not a serious literature and whoever hopes to find some deep thoughts there will be dissapointed. And it's just fiction, so if you really want to learn about Illuminati or Templars, Brown's book are not the best sources of information.

I personally love King and Tolkien and certainly don' think that they are overrated

[subterranean]

I have no idea which i dislike the most .... maybe Kafka .... but the most "overated" might be ... wel ... Kafka i think.


Why..........?

[subterranean]

People are going to hate me for this. I'm going to list a few authors who I think are over rated. Now that doesn't mean they don't have value, just that their reputation exceeds my estimate of their merit. And let me emphasize, my estimate.

Mark Twain
Ernest Hemingway
ee cumings
Norman Mailer
Allen Ginsberg
Kate Chopin
Ayn Rand
Joseph Heller
Arthur Miller

I stayed from contemporary writers, since it takes time for reputations to settle in. And by coincidence I see I picked only American writers, which probably means I don't feel comfortable with knowing the reputations of foreign writers.

I have one book by Chopin (The Awakening), which I have not finished up till now. If I'm not mistaken, it's one of her bests. So yes, I agree that she is overrated. About Hemingway, well I enjoy Snow of Kilimanjaro and The Fisherman..., but perhaps due to my lack of taste in literature, I find them good... but not that good. While for Heller, Catch 22 is one of my all time fav books!

[Kop_Princess]

J.K Rowling would have to be my choice, I'm afraid. Her ideas are great but her writing isn't.

[holdencaulfield]

i agree with you kop princess.
arthur conan doyle stands in much the same relation to the previous century as does rowling to our age.

[Chinaski]

Charles Darnay is spot on IMO. This argument that JK Rowling is a great writer - it is just NOT TRUE - fact! I don't think you can over rate Miller. Great playwright.

[Chinaski]

Oh and the above two posts agree - excellent - let's put this JK Rowling = Worthy Author thing to bed! Great if it gets kids reading - end of!

[genghiskhan]

Perhaps this is heresy since he is my favorite classic author, but Twain is slighly overrated. He came to live on his reputation, not his writing towards the end of his life, and a lot of it lacks the wit and spark that made Twain who he was.

I disagree. I think the best thing he wrote was his last - The Mysterious Stranger.

[genghiskhan]

Ultimately, I think you can make a case for any author being overrated. A work has to stand alone, and often more credit is given to the person than the work, and it's sometimes unbalanced.


Maybe I'm just dense, but, uhh, these works don't write themselves, or just spontaneously appear. Every great work of literature was written by an author, and all credit and acclaim given to that author is completely just and deserved.

[genghiskhan]

It appears that everyone hates Dan Brown.Why so?I never read any of his books,but I've been meaning to get the Da Vinci Code.It seems pretty popular to normal folks, but serious literature fans hate it.

I hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated that book. So horribly written. Cliched, vacuous, and inane. It's a shame because I think the subject matter is interesting, but I just can't get past the terrible writing.

[Charles Darnay]

Comment on the Tolkien is over-rated subject: I think we can blame Peter Jackson for that. I think that Tolkien was in a comfortable place on the bookstore shelves before the LOTR movies. Those who enjoyed good fantasy books were often pointed towards his works, but other than that - there was never much hype about Tolkien.

[underground]

the strange thing is, in one interview, dan brown didn't even hesitate at all to broadcast the formula of a successful. it's, like, why continue using a formula when a book will only end up cliched?

anyway, i have to add c. s. lewis to the list. everyone loves the narnia chronicles, and while i did enjoy some of the characters, the books are pretty bad from a literary standpoint. the writing style is horrible, and lucy is one of the first mary sues.

[woeful painter]

over-rated for me are mostly modern writers who had their works made into movies, which I personally find discomforting. I agree with everyone who put Dan Brown and Rowling on their list...even Tolkien and Lewis' Narnia Chronicles have been fancied by bedtime readers but are only popularized and over-rated because of their movie versions, they have such artistic ideas though...

[Idril]

Comment on the Tolkien is over-rated subject: I think we can blame Peter Jackson for that. I think that Tolkien was in a comfortable place on the bookstore shelves before the LOTR movies. Those who enjoyed good fantasy books were often pointed towards his works, but other than that - there was never much hype about Tolkien.

I think that's very true. It never occured to me to read Tolkien before I saw the previews for the movie but the previews looked good and I wanted to read the book before I saw the movie and I was hooked. And his style varies so greatly between books, The Hobbit is a very light hearted, simple tale, Lord of the Rings is much darker, more complex and The Silmarillion is so very formal, it reads more like a history book than a novel and his short stories are somewhat uneven so if you like one of his books and read another expecting more of the same, you're going to be disappointed.

[Boris239]

All my friends were really big fans of Tolkien way before Peter Jackson's movie. He is probably the father of fantasy, he influenced a lot of fantasy authors all over the world. I'm not saying that everybody must read LOTR, but if you like fantasy you certainly do. It's arguably the best fantasy book ever.

[AttorneyGonzo]

About Hemingway, well I enjoy Snow of Kilimanjaro and The Fisherman..., but perhaps due to my lack of taste in literature, I find them good... but not that good.

The Fisherman... do you mean "The Old Man and the Sea" ?
Yeah, Hemingway is simple, unlike so-called serious literature.
For me he is among the best and thus deserves every bit of recognition he received and still will.
It didn't make him much happier anyway...

Steinbeck is another God-like writer.
And then, moving into more serious literature, I like to read Henry Thoreau:
powerful messages in prose that reads like poetry.

[PeterL]

Comment on the Tolkien is over-rated subject: I think we can blame Peter Jackson for that. I think that Tolkien was in a comfortable place on the bookstore shelves before the LOTR movies.

I finally got around to seeing the movies a few weeks ago. Most people I know read and loved Tolkien's books years ago. Peter Jackson did an amazing job putting much of LOTR into film, but it is a completely different experience to watch the movies than it is to read the books. I doin't think that Peter Jackson did anything to raise anyone's opinion of Tolkien, except among people who were led to read Tolkien as a result of seeing the movies.

[bootyqueen]

I'm going to have to say Margaret Atwood.... I have never been into her... Another vote for Dan Brown. I did like the DaVinci Code, but then I read Angels & Demons and I was like "This is the same book!"
Yes, he is entertaining, but definetely overrated, when you consider how many people buy his books and how long they've been on the bestsellers list. Although I believe that any reading, even inferior literature, is better than no reading at all. I think that books like The DaVinci Code and Harry Potter serve to introduce people to how great reading can be, like a stepping stone.

[IrishCanadian]

I'm so glad theres someone here who agrees on my sentiments of Margret Atwood. To be honest I've never read any of her novels so I can't judge that. But her poems are terrible. She puts comparitively little work into the structure and layout of her poems: line breaks and word choices have little significance. And they tend to be based on a sing;e interestig concept, an idea that says nothing. I'm sure she would be much more positively taken if she wrote epigrams instead.

[bootyqueen]

Yep, I read The Handmaid's Tale and it didn't really affect me at all.... Usually books make me think a little bit, but I really didn't feel much while reading it.

[Bandini]

I haven't read any Atwood for years - but when I read 'The Handmaid's Tale' years ago I loved it. I haven't read her poetry for years - but I seem to remember quite liking it. I quite like 'room to think' in a poem - if that makes sense?

[Woland]

I would say Tolkien. To be fair Middle-Earth is an astounding world (and he deserves praise for his efforts), but currently he's too popular.

[OedipusReD]

haven taken several canadian lit courses i've been forcibly exposed to atwood, however, there was one piece i loved, and that was Oryx and Crake, it's actually one of my favourite recent novels, i'd recommend you give it a shot, i found it nothing at all like the other books of hers that i've read

[Woland]

Ayn Rand
She is loved for her p[hilosophy ... but modern philosohpy students and proffessors do not consider her a philosopher. She also repeats ideas in the re-accurring themes in her very long books: The Fountainhead went on for about 700 pages of the same old thing to drive home a point that she made in the first 50 pages.

Yea, if you decide to beat your audience over the head for that long, at least have the common decency to make it entertaining. :smash:

[Cormeister37]

This is a controversial post. I have to defend Hemingway and Joyce because they are two of my favorite, and both have moved me through their writing. Not to offend anyone, but I personally did not feel too keenly about either "The Bluest Eye" or "Beloved" by Toni Morrison.

[woeful painter]

Isn't it really based on personal decisions and conclusions of the majority that is why an author becomes overrated? Of course we would defend and uphold what we most certainly be fond of, irregardless of anybody else's opinions. People have different views and authors have a wide variety of audience whom they may or may not please. It will be practically realtive and/or argumentative to those of clashing opinions.

[geea]

i think a lot of modern writers are overrated. i agree with some of the previous posts about their works being overpopularized by making them into movies. a lot of people only find out about these authors because they saw the movie, and not because they're inherently popular or because their work is good. anyway, my list of overrated authors include dan brown, rowling, tolkien and stephen king. i liked margaret atwood, though.

[subterranean]

I'm going to have to say Margaret Atwood....

I saw many of her works when I visited the bookstore the other day. Then I remember her name mentioned in this thread ;). No, I don't mean to say that I judge an author based on people's opinion only, because I have to read it first before I can share the same opinion. But I don't know, I did somewhat hesitated to pick hers.

Cormeister37, I have to agree with you there. Morisson deserver all the praises for her works. Beloved and Song of Solomon are fine literature works, I think.

And Woland, Tolkien is very popular at the moment thanks to Jackson.

[Zippy]

Yeah, Hemingway is simple, unlike so-called serious literature.
For me he is among the best and thus deserves every bit of recognition he received and still will.

Couldn't agree more. He's not over-rated in the least, he's a rare case of living up to the hype.

[bugmasta]

I would write more against Dan Brown but I think the point has been made.

[mia wallace]

allen ginsberg is my HERO. why in the world would someone put allan ginsberg on the list.

by the way, i think this thread is pretty negative. instead of bashing these authors, who work on these books for years at a time, devoting themselves wholly to them, lets glorify the ones we love!!

ehh?
ehh?
anyone?

[Bandini]

I saw this recently, and it is sort of related!

Adult editions of children's books

If you must follow the adventures of a public school conjuror, even though you are a) notionally a grown adult, and b) have probably been to university or at least to 'big school', why attempt to conceal the fact behind a different cover, as if fellow passengers will assume after a casual glance that you're actually reading Thomas Mann in the original German?

Just because the train on the front is black and white rather than bright red, it doesn't suddenly become a harrowing Booker prize-winner...

How do the dinner party conversations go?
"What are you reading at the moment?"
"It's called The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It's about a caterpillar who get's really hungry - he just has to keep on eating stuff."
"Iv'e read it. Marvellous."
"Oh, don't tell me how it ends!"
"No, I wouldn't. But it's...well it's pretty moving, Oh look, I'm hogging all the Hula Hoops..."

[PeterL]

by the way, i think this thread is pretty negative. instead of bashing these authors, who work on these books for years at a time, devoting themselves wholly to them, lets glorify the ones we love!!


There also was a "Most Under Rated Author" thread, but that didn't have as much staying power as this one. I guess it is the power of negativity.

[The Unnamable]

I guess it is the power of negativity.
And enormous presumption.

So, whom should we trash next?

[Bandini]

I guess it is the power of negativity.

There's nothing wrong with well directed negativity! Good God - there can hardly be progress if we just all nod our heads and agree can there?

Thesis+Antithesis = Synthesis

Those who would inhibit intellectual progress, namely the 'dogmatic', would inhibit negativity, under the guise (or illussion) that it is 'destructive' or 'bad'. It is exactly the opposite; it is necessary in order to make intellectual progress.

[PeterL]

And enormous presumption.

So, whom should we trash next?

We could trash anyone.
How about James Joyce. He had so poor a command of the English language that he had to make up words, play with sound, and be obscure. By some definitions "Finnegans Wake" isn't literature, because it is so difficult to understand. "Ulysses" is scarcely better. Obviously "Ulysses was written for only the upper crust of academic types. Plebes could never hope to appreciate it.

Or maybe we could trash Nabokov. Not only was he into pedophilia, but he was egomanical about it. He should have kept to learned papers about butterflies.

Hemingway is also an easy target, too easy. Simple sentences are for simple thoughts, so, clearly, Hemmingway had mostly simple thoughts, either that or he was targetting an audience that couldn't comprehend complicated thoughts.

Satre is another easy target. He was an egomaniac, and he admitted it. Who else would care what he wrote?

Faulkner would be easy also, but I haven't read enough of his works to make any truly broad slams.

[PeterL]

There's nothing wrong with well directed negativity! Good God - there can hardly be progress if we just all nod our heads and agree can there?

Thesis+Antithesis = Synthesis

Those who would inhibit intellectual progress, namely the 'dogmatic', would inhibit negativity, under the guise (or illussion) that it is 'destructive' or 'bad'. It is exactly the opposite; it is necessary in order to make intellectual progress.

Thesis+Antithesis = the Thesis being thrown out, disproven.

"Those who would inhibit intellectual progress, namely the 'dogmatic'," usually show a great deal of negativity toward ideas that they don't like. Disagreement is a wonderful thing, when it is expressed well and without ad hominems. Criticizing something in a way that is not a personal attack is rather difficult. Most people consider attacks on their basic beliefs to be personal attacks, regardless of how diplomatically the criticism is expressed.

[The Unnamable]

PeterL,
You do realise that I was agreeing with you that this is a rather mean spirited thread (insofar as we take it seriously, which I don’t really think we are supposed to)? All the writers you mention are great and I hope you don’t think that I actually wanted people to name more authors we could trash.

[PeterL]

PeterL,
You do realise that I was agreeing with you that this is a rather mean spirited thread (insofar as we take it seriously, which I don’t really think we are supposed to)? All the writers you mention are great and I hope you don’t think that I actually wanted people to name more authors we could trash.

Yes, I realized that, and I was joking, or trying to, that's why I mentioned only great writers. If someone wants to trash an author, any excuse will do.

[superunknown]

If you doubt Twain's position among the greats of literature, read "The Mysterious Stranger." Not many people know it, but it's amazing and in my opinion far better than Huck Finn. The story takes place in Austria in 1590 when a group of young boys meet an angel who performs miracles. When they ask him what his name is, he casually responds that it's Satan, but not that Satan. He's his nephew, and cannot sin because he is an angel and doesn't know how to. However, pretty soon it starts becoming apparent that there's something sinister about Satan. Here's a great excerpt:


"That is human life. A child's first act knocks over the initial brick, and the rest will follow inexorably. If you could see into the future, as I can, you would see everything that was going to happen to that creature; for nothing can change the order of its life after the first event has determined it. That is, nothing will change it, because each act unfailingly begets an act, that act begets another, and so on to the end, and the seer can look forward down the line and see just when each act is to have birth, from cradle to grave."

"Does God order the career?"

"Foreordain it? No. The man's circumstances and environment order it. His first act determines the second and all that follow after. But suppose, for argument's sake, that the man should skip one of these acts; an apparently trifling one, for instance; suppose that it had been appointed that on a certain day, at a certain hour and minute and second and fraction of a second he should go to the well, and he didn't go. That man's career would change utterly, from that moment; thence to the grave it would be wholly different from the career which his first act as a child had arranged for him. Indeed, it might be that if he had gone to the well he would have ended his career on a throne, and that omitting to do it would set him upon a career that would lead to beggary and a pauper's grave. For instance: if at any time - say in boyhood - Columbus had skipped the triflingest little link in the chain of acts projected and made inevitable by his first childish act, it would have changed his whole subsequent life, and he would have become a priest and died obscure in an Italian village, and America would not have been discovered for two centuries afterward. I know this. To skip any one of the billion acts in Columbus's chain would have wholly changed his life. I have examined his billion of possible careers, and in only one of them occurs the discovery of America. You people do not suspect that all of your acts are of one size and importance, but it is true; to snatch at an appointed fly is as big with fate for you as is any other appointed act - "

"As the conquering of a continent, for instance?"

"Yes. Now, then, no man ever does drop a link - the thing has never happened! Even when he is trying to make up his mind as to whether he will do a thing or not, that itself is a link, an act, and has its proper place in his chain; and when he finally decides an act, that also was the thing which he was absolutely certain to do. You see, now, that a man will never drop a link in his chain. He cannot. If he made up his mind to try, that project would itself be an unavoidable link a thought bound to occur to him at that precise moment, and made certain by the first act of his babyhood."

It seemed so dismal!

"He is a prisoner for life." I said sorrowfully, "and cannot get free."

"No, of himself he cannot get away from the consequences of his first childish act. But I can free him."

I looked up wistfully.

"I have changed the careers of a number of your villagers."

I tried to thank him, but found it difficult, and let it drop.

"I shall make some other changes. You know that little Lisa Brandt?!

"Oh yes, everybody does. My mother says she is so sweet and so lovely that she is not like any other child. She says she will be the pride of the village when she grows up; and its idol, too, just as she is now."

"I shall change her future."

"Make it better?" I asked.

"Yes. And I will change the future of Nikolaus."

I was glad, this time, and said, "I don't need to ask about his case; you will be sure to do generously by him."

"It is my intention."

Straight off I was building that great future of Nicky's in my imagination, and had already made a renowned general of him and hofmeister at the court, when I noticed that Satan was waiting for me to get ready to listen again. I was ashamed of having exposed my cheap imaginings to him, and was expecting some sarcasms, but it did not happen. He proceeded with his subject:

"Nicky's appointed life is sixty-two years."

"That's grand!" I said.

"Lisa's, thirty-six. But, as I told you, I shall change their lives and those ages. Two minutes and a quarter from now Nikolaus will wake out of his sleep and find the rain blowing in. It was appointed that he should turn over and go to sleep again. But I have appointed that he shall get up and close the window first. That trifle will change his career entirely. He will rise in the morning two minutes later than the chain of his life had appointed him to rise. By consequence, thenceforth nothing will ever happen to him in accordance with the details of the old chain." He took out his watch and sat looking at it a few moments, then said: "Nikolaus has risen to close the window. His life is changed, his new career has begun. There will be consequences."

It made me feel creepy; it was uncanny.

"But for this change certain things would happen twelve days from now. For instance, Nikolaus would save Lisa from drowning. He would arrive on the scene at exactly the right moment - four minutes past ten, the long-ago appointed instant of time - and the water would be shoal, the achievement easy and certain. But he will arrive some seconds too late, now; Lisa will have struggled into deeper water. He will do his best, but both will drown."

"Oh, Satan! oh, dear Satan!" I cried, with the tears rising in my eyes,"save them! Don't let it happen. I can't bear to lose Nikolaus, he is my loving playmate and friend; and think of Lisa's poor mother!"

I clung to him and begged and pleaded. but he was not moved. He made me sit down again, and told me I must hear him out.

"I have changed Nikolaus's life, and this has changed Lisa's. If I had not done this, Nikolaus would save Lisa, then he would catch cold from his drenching: one of your race's fantastic and desolating scarlet fevers would follow, with pathetic after-effects; for forty-six years he would lie in his bed a paralytic log, deaf, dumb, blind, and praying night and day for the blessed relief of death. Shall I change his life back?"

"Oh no! Oh, not for the world! In charity and pity leave it as it is."

"It is best so. I could not have changed any other link in his life and done so good a service. He had a billion possible careers, but not one of them worth living; they were charged full with miseries and disasters. But for my intervention he would do his brave deed twelve days from now - a deed begun and ended in six minutes - and get for all reward those forty-six years of sorrow and suffering I told you of. It is one of the cases I was thinking of awhile ago when I said that sometimes an act which brings the actor an hour's happiness and self-satisfaction is paid for - or punished - by years of suffering."

I wondered what poor little Lisa's early death would save her from. He answered the thought:

"From ten years of pain and slow recovery from an accident, and then from nineteen years' pollution, shame, depravity, crime, ending with death at the hands of the executioner. Twelve days hence she will die; her mother would save her life if she could.- Am I not kinder than her mother?"

"Yes, indeed yes; and wiser."

[rabid reader]

Walt Whittman... I think he was just an American propaganda machine during a time when the US needed someone to make everyone want to be American

[PeterL]

Walt Whittman... I think he was just an American propaganda machine during a time when the US needed someone to make everyone want to be American

I'll second that. Although I realize that he did a huge amount of self-promotion, I don't understand how the promotion overcame the fact that his poetry was pretty bad. No, not "pretty bad", just bad.

[Asa Adams]

Agree and disagree with darnay. Atwood does have Talent. Very much so. her older works, not so much. her newer pieces, oh so very much.

[Boris239]

If you doubt Twain's position among the greats of literature, read "The Mysterious Stranger." Not many people know it, but it's amazing and in my opinion far better than Huck Finn. The story takes place in Austria in 1590 when a group of young boys meet an angel who performs miracles. When they ask him what his name is, he casually responds that it's Satan, but not that Satan. He's his nephew, and cannot sin because he is an angel and doesn't know how to. However, pretty soon it starts becoming apparent that there's something sinister about Satan. Here's a great excerpt:

I've read it and it's very interesting although I somehow found it not Twainlike if you want- it was so dark and pessimistic.

[Arethusa]

Hermann Broch

Right, as if Virgil also thought in dactylic hexameter. What a crock of thermoneuclear, stuck to my shoe, glow in the dark...shtuff and nonsense.

[NewAgewriter389]

mmm

i have to say Shakespeare....yeah...to be or not be thingy, he said man delights not me, and the world seemed to him a sterile promontory and im just talking crap here. i just wanted to put him here

hes the man!although i can never say someone is the greatest at ANYTHING cuz its all so subjective, after all everyhting is!? isnt it?

[blackbird_9]

I have no means to justify this other than my taste in literature, but I can't get through anything Kerouac has written without falling asleep or my mind wandering. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one who's in need of constant action and dramatic stimulation to enjoy something, but this man somehow manages to numb my brain. Does anyone else find him just as boring?

[Jozanny]

I have no means to justify this other than my taste in literature, but I can't get through anything Kerouac has written without falling asleep or my mind wandering. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one who's in need of constant action and dramatic stimulation to enjoy something, but this man somehow manages to numb my brain. Does anyone else find him just as boring?

I must caution I only know segments of Kerouac's work. He does capture, fairly, that by the late 1950's the American frontier was nothing but an echo of what it once was, but beyond that, boomers who treat him as a demi-god run a tiresome treadmill. The narrative voice can hold your attention, but seems to hover between Hemingway's immediacy and Woolf's stream of consciousness, burning out before it ever hit full throttle.

On The Road isn't a bad book necessarily, just a styled period piece. As a writer Jack pretty much flared out after that.

I would pick Annie Proulx, which I know isn't fair, since she is a successful contemporary, but Amazon has over 1000 owners of The Shipping News who are seemingly eager to be divested of the title--and I don't see her attempts at regionalized humor as very original.

[kelby_lake]

I'll say Harper Lee, although she's not really an author as she only wrote one book which was hardly 'wow'. Is 12 Angry Men a book? If so, then it's so much better.

[Joreads]

I'll say Harper Lee, although she's not really an author as she only wrote one book which was hardly 'wow'. Is 12 Angry Men a book? If so, then it's so much better.

12 Angry men is actually a play by Reginald Rose. I have to agree is a great movie one of my top 10.

[stlukesguild]

Is 12 Angry Men a book? If so, then it's so much better.

How on earth could you make the claim that "12 Angry Men" is a book that is so much better than "To Kill a Mockingbird" when you don't even know if it was a book? To offer an opinion that one book is so much better than another would seemingly assume that you have actually read both.:confused: As movies... both are good, but I personally prefer Mockingbird... which I think is a good book, although not great.

[JBI]

Twelve Angry Men is even worse than To Kill a Mockingbird. I have seen the play, and have seen the movie version of Twelve Angry Men, and have read To Kill a Mockingbird twice now.

Twelve Angry Men has the advantage of being shorter, and not require reading if you see the play or movie, whereas To Kill a Mockingbird suffers by forcing a reader to push through 300 pages of a novella-length story out of Twain completely, with very little character, and less growth.

As for Twelve Angry Men, that work has essentially archetypal characters from society, with a predictable plot, and the most bizarre plot, of truly no depth or intelligence I have seen. Come on, one can doubt everything, I think it was Socrates who first said that. We don't need a play about people who dwell on "what ifs" to the point that they let a killer off the hook. The profound statement the play tries to suppose is that, "There are always gaps in narrative, therefore no one should be prosecuted." I guess it caters to the semi-informed unlegal type, who believe this is actual 'justice' and that this is what actually happens in court.

That being said, feel free to make up your own minds on both of these works. They are better than some of the stuff out there, but Twelve Angry Men can only really be stomached well once (I don't know how I got it down twice) and can only be read as a piece of suspenseful drama, though a very predictable and stupid one at that. Then again, the Academy seems to have liked the movie, so perhaps it isn't as bad as I pretend.

[coolestnerdever]

I'd have to say Salinger is slightly overrated. Don't get me wrong, I loved the Catcher in the Rye, but at the same time I just don't think his writing was comparable with the other great authors.

[kelby_lake]

Is 12 Angry Men a book? If so, then it's so much better.

How on earth could you make the claim that "12 Angry Men" is a book that is so much better than "To Kill a Mockingbird" when you don't even know if it was a book? To offer an opinion that one book is so much better than another would seemingly assume that you have actually read both.:confused: As movies... both are good, but I personally prefer Mockingbird... which I think is a good book, although not great.

I was pretty sure it was a book and I could tell from the direction and tone of each one. 12 Angry Men showed prejudice better because it was slowly revealed that the jury member said the man was guilty because of his own prejudices, not solely racism. Mockingbird is said by some to be an important book about prejudices but only the courtcase is worth reading and that's only about 40 pages because it is cut off by annoying Scout who basically says at the end 'racism is scary but i have my dad so it's okay'. Using a child narrator to make the book seem original was a stupid idea because it hindered the book.It would be like a fish narrating a shipwreck but it could only hear half of the good stuff because it needed to eat some seaweed.

Oh, I like debates :D

[JBI]

To Kill a Mockingbird is a bildungsroman, not a book about racism. Some critics fail to realize that, but the court case is meant to be used a backdrop for the coming of age of Scout. I didn't like the book, but I think the reason its reputation is so great is because people fail to realize the racism is backdrop, and not actually THE STORY. The story is how her brother broke his leg, and the setting is in a racist south.

12 Angry men on the other hand, I doubt can be read, except for politics, which of course, are rather flimsy. Seriously, the play, or book, or whatever you wish to calls it doesn't justify that the suspected killer is innocent, it merely states that one can unravel any truth because one cannot even prove the existence of others. It is saying essentially, "We didn't witness the murder, how can we take testimony of people who did not see every single detail. How can we take into account anything from anyone who isn't omniscient." The verdict isn't really that he was innocent, but seems to imply that god will act as the judge, being that he is the only person fit to give out any law, being that no one knows everything.

A truly moral-less story, loaded with pseudo answers, dependent on an unstated plot, and loaded with the most deus ex machina revelation of events I have yet seen.

The audience is revealed to the "flaw" in the evidence only when the person is about to acknowledge it. It is as if we are too stupid to be on the jury ourselves, and they need to keep editing what we know as it comes. It reads more, then, like a mystery than a drama, and has no coherent structuring. It is as if the viewer, or reader needs to be fed additional testimony in order to realize he ACTUALLY HASN'T SEEN THE CASE. The plot is the revelation of facts, and how they change the verdict, not the revelation of character, and how that changes their morality. It is backwards to the core.

[Drkshadow03]

To Kill a Mockingbird is a bildungsroman, not a book about racism. Some critics fail to realize that, but the court case is meant to be used a backdrop for the coming of age of Scout. I didn't like the book, but I think the reason its reputation is so great is because people fail to realize the racism is backdrop, and not actually THE STORY. The story is how her brother broke his leg, and the setting is in a racist south.

Although the story is a coming-of-age story, it is also about racism. I don't think it's a matter of "either/or," but rather it is about both. Part of the story and her coming-of-age if I remember correctly is Scout trying to make sense of the racist south. The two themes tie-in together.

[JBI]

Racism is a theme. The story is about Scout, not the death, or trial of Tom Robinson. The first half of the book doesn't even contain the trial. The trial is what brings about change (though not really, as the narrator never seems to change) to the setting of the first half, and creates a plot in which the character of Scout can grow. Innocence is a more central theme than racism in the book. Racism just overpowers it because it is a more popular discussion topic, and because the novel is mediocre, but culturally significant because of its handling of racism.

The other themes get overpowered by the obvious theme for the simple reason that the prose is mediocre, and it causes everything else to seem insignificant, despite its prevalence in the novel. The book says very little beyond almost plagiarizing from Twain on anything but the trial.

[slobone]

I have a problem with this topic, because I don't think it's fair to rate a book I haven't read. And if I don't like an author, I'm not going to read them. So there are very few where I feel qualified to say they're overrated. Certainly I have no problem putting Dan Brown and JK Rowling on that list.

Technically, I suppose any author could be over-rated, if they have an unsustainably high reputation. Certainly Shakespeare has been overrated at times, especially by Harold Bloom.

Among contemporary writers, I've only read one book each by Pynchon, Ishiguro, and DeLillo, but none of them tempted me to read further.

Virginia Woolf I think is somewhat overrated. I've enjoyed some of her books, but I don't know if she belongs on the absolute top shelf of great authors. Same with Forster and Hemingway. Edith Wharton (who I also enjoy) probably doesn't either, but I don't think too many people have put her there.

A tough topic, though.

[kelby_lake]

To Kill a Mockingbird is a bildungsroman, not a book about racism. Some critics fail to realize that, but the court case is meant to be used a backdrop for the coming of age of Scout. I didn't like the book, but I think the reason its reputation is so great is because people fail to realize the racism is backdrop, and not actually THE STORY. The story is how her brother broke his leg, and the setting is in a racist south.

And this is such a boring idea that we have to have some racism thrown into the
mix.

And to be fair to 12 Angry Men, it was in a time when a lot of people were ignorant and prejudiced. A lot of people in the Deep South still are racist. And I liked it because everyone was racist and they were quick to condemn him purely on his race but the 'ringleader' was most strongly prejudiced because of his own son.

[noheroes13]

vonnegut
kerouac

[Sir Bartholomew]

even though i love jane austen like i can read her books over and over till i die, i think her overrated.

[ctalerico]

Stephen King -- unless success is measured solely in dollar $igns. How do you spell repetition?